Nick and Julie from Confetti System
All images Copyright 2013: Heather Lighton
MOUND ACTIVITY X SARAH crowEST
**THIRD DRAWER DOWN – 93 GEORGE STREET, FITZROY VIC
EXHIBITION OPENING: SATURDAY 22ND OF JUNE 2013
EXHIBITION RUNS: 22ND OF JUNE, 2013 – 10TH OF AUGUST 2013
**
What is Mound Activity?
It appears here, on these shelves at Third Drawer Down, as an exercise in making the same kind of thing (artefact?) over and over again. We might detect an intractable fixity via art production involving a blinkered focus on agglomerating matter into lumps and mounds. Materials accumulate – fired ceramic, bronze, paper, wood, paint, coffee grounds, plaster, masonry adhesive, Winterstone, polystyrene, air dried clay, paint and glue.
There are signs of persistence beyond what is required or desired, signs of an artist focusing too intently on the matter-at-hand regardless of the reception or interest from the world at large. Might this, perhaps, be considered a perilous move for an artist?
Is this an exercise of the recognized slapstick technique of flogging a joke to death or a joyful expression of immersion in sensuous matter? There is humour in such dogged commitment to maintaining an art practice predicated upon such compulsive repetition. Humour has the potential to alert the viewer to something troubling, rather than merely fun, and the incorporation of humorous strategies and effects can operate as a form of critical engagement.
Could Mound Activity™ involve the development of a recognizable style which we might understand as one of the hallmarks of a successful commercial art practice? Indeed can these mounds find a place as home décor?
Mound Activity is a long-term project unfolding over several decades and is sometimes ‘this’ and sometimes ‘that’. Using sustainable processes that embrace everyday recycled materials, Mound Activity extends the emergent art objects via a process of ongoing transformation into new families of objects. From time to time, ‘the mounds’ as mutating and clustering forms are bought together, caught in a stage of intensification that appears as arrested development – the exhibition.
Dr Sarah crowEST has a PhD in Mound Activity from Melbourne University.
Early influences in anthropomorphising rocks and mounds can be traced back to experiences in learning from and assisting villagers to create wayside rock shrines in India.
HELLO CONFETTISYSTEM COMPETITION:
@CONFETTISYSTEM is coming to Melbourne, and want to workshop with you!
Julie Ho and Nick Anderson are CONFETTISYSTEM. This New York artist/designer duo transform simple material such as tissue, silk and cardboard into interactive objects, which occupy the space between the ephemeral and the permanent and evoke nostalgia and lighthearted fun.
CONFETTISYSTEM’s art direction and installations have recently been exhibited at PS1MOMA, Gagosian Gallery, Opening Ceremony, American Ballet Theatre and Other Criteria. Music industry clients include Beyonce, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, and Karen O. They are in Melbourne to create and install their work for the upcoming KING KONG musical.
Only 15 lucky creatives will get a chance to hang out with CONFETTISYSTEM, and learn how to make some of their beautiful designs.
ENTER THE COMPETITION FOR A CHANCE TO JOIN THE WORKSHOP:
@CONFETTISYSTEM is coming to Melbourne.
Make your own confetti and use it in a new and interesting way by staging a photograph of the moment and sending it via instagram: My entry for the @CONFETTISYSTEM #HelloCONFETTISYSTEM Melbourne workshop presented by @ThirdDrawerDown @CCP_Australia @Threethousandmelbourne
How much confetti and how you use it is entirely up to you. The 15 most entertaining, inspiring and creative instagram images will be invited to this exclusive WORKSHOP on Sunday 16th June (time and place TBC). Entries close on midnight Wednesday 5th of June. Enter as many times as you like.
The Winners will be announced via @ThirdDrawerDown @CCP_Australia @Threethousandmelbourne and Instagram on Saturday June 8th.
CONFETTISYSTEM are in Australia on behalf of Creative Production Services who commissioned CONFETTISYSTEM specifically for the Opening Night Party of King Kong the Musical.
Win weekly giveaways, all by taking a instagram picture. Our lovely Seala will be playing a game of ‘THIRD DRAWER DOWN SAYS’ with you, and the best image wins!
Every Thursday morning Seala will choose an action to be photographed. This could be anything — take a picture under your bed — take a picture of the sexiest thing in the room — take a picture of yourself upsidedown – whatever she wants!
She will post out your duties via instagram @ThirdDrawerDown before 1:00PM. Send your pictures @ThirdDrawerDown #ThirdDrawerDownSAYS
Seala Says – and the best picture wins.
Winners will be posted @ThirdDrawerDown every monday, and can come into the store to gather their surprise.
Pick up in store only, Sorry!
Third Drawer Down Studio has curated the theme of love.
Third Drawer Down Studio is sharing the love with their client Love My Love. A boutique online store that curates globally designed lifestyle and pleasure objects embracing the theme of love.
Love My Love is pioneering new directions in sensual designer objects, collaborating with international Artists and Designers developing a series of exclusive commissions surrounding the theme of love and the erotic that are destined for your mantle piece – not your side drawer!
So to share the love, WIN A $50 GIFT VOUCHER by subscribing to the Love My Love newsletter to be in the draw to win a $50 gift voucher, drawn once a week until June 30th.
EXTRACT FROM GUARDIAN NEWSPAPER The Chinese artist Ai Weiwei has always had something of the rock star about him. Now his hotly anticipated musical debut has finally emerged blinking into the glare of international attention: the self-proclaimed heavy metal single Dumbass.
The 55-year-old said his first foray into music was “a kind of self-therapy” helping him to deal with the impact of his 81-day detention in 2011. He was one of dozens seized in a crackdown on campaigners, lawyers and dissidents.
He told the Guardian his country was one of “crazy menace and inhuman conditions” and the video shows an “inch-accurate” recreation of the cell where he was held – down to its wallpaper. He had nothing to do while he was there but memorise every detail, he said.
Going back into that situation “was very hard, but I had to do it because that helped me to overcome the trauma”, Ai added.
“Music is a kind of self-therapy and at the same time helps the public to see. Even conditions like these can still turn into a positive effort.”
The song also offers a scathing verdict on intellectuals trying to work with the system. “So many people think they can improve the situation or collaborate. I think that’s very wishful thinking in this political structure. It makes people not very conscious of what’s happening,” he said.
In the song he growls: “When you’re ready to strike, he mumbles about non-violence … [I] stand on the frontline like a dumbass, in a country that puts out like a hooker. The fields are full of fuckers, dumbasses are everywhere.
“Fuck forgiveness, tolerance be damned, to hell with manners, the low-life’s invincible.”
“Dumbass” is a mild translation of the stronger Chinese expletive – though still too racy, it emerged, for the New York Times to print.
The track is not exactly Metallica: others might peg it closer to avant-garde rock. “After I said it would be heavy metal I ran back to check what heavy metal would be like. Then I thought, oh my god, it’s quite different,” Ai acknowledged.
“So it’s Chinese heavy metal, or maybe Caochangdi [where his studio is based] heavy metal.”
The video for the single – available for download at www.aiweiwei.com – was a collaboration with acclaimed cinematographer Christopher Doyle. Diving in and out of the cell’s reality and the soldier’s fantasies, it begins with Ai in a black hood bearing the word “suspect” and ends with him shaven and slathered in red lipstick.
Ai said he and his friends and family still suffered nightmares about his experience.
Police had told him, he said, that “you ask for your freedom but we will make you pay with your life”.
He added: “It leaves a permanent mark, like a scar.”
CONFETTISYSTEM: 100 Arrangements
January 20—March 31, 2013
The artist-design firm CONFETTISYSTEM works in a multivalent environment that resists simple categorization by discipline. The firm creates set designs, objects, and interactive installations for a range of partners including corporate clients, musicians, and art institutions. Comfortable in an advertising campaign, on a concert stage, or in a gallery, their work can be regarded as sculpture, design, and product—a confluence that is unconcerned with differences of commercial enterprise and nonprofit, the varying demands of function and aesthetics, and distinctions between consumer and connoisseur.
For MoMA PS1’s two-story gallery, CONFETTISYSTEM (Nicholas Andersen and Julie Ho, est. 2008) has created an immersive environment inspired by the mechanics of theatrical staging and fly systems. Evoking theatrical scrims and curtains, 100 Arrangements features new and older design elements by Andersen and Ho that are suspended from above and can be adjusted to varying heights to produce nearly endless permutations. The work serves as a performance space, playing host to live events that are part of MoMA PS1’s Sunday Sessions program. The variable environment can be reconfigured to best suit each event, highlighting a compositional system that allows for a functional design.
CONFETTISYSTEM has art directed and created installations and sets for numerous fashion brands as well as musical acts Beach House, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, and Beyonce. In addition to decorating for private celebrations and working as creative consultants for numerous private labels, CONFETTISYSTEM has created custom design work for The New York Times, American Ballet Theatre, Opening Ceremony, Lanvin, Other Criteria UK, and Pop magazine with Gagosian Gallery, among others. For the past three years, CONFETTISYSTEM has created custom stage sets for MoMA PS1’s Warm Up music series.
text by MoMA PS1
For the month of May we will be exhibiting ceramic works by US artist, Morgan Peck, Paintings by Tessa Carapic, sculpture by Kenny Pittock, and wooden camera by Brodie Wood.
Join us for a drink and view this Saturday afternoon from 3:00-5:00.
WHEN: SATURDAY 11TH OF MAY 3:00PM-5:00PM WHERE: THIRD DRAWER DOWN, 93 GEORGE STREET, FITZROY
About the Artists:
MORGAN PECK:
Born and raised in Washington state, Morgan Peck grew up across the street from the water. Every summer was spent sailing with her family in the Canadian Desolation Sound. Her father was a wood worker and their house was constantly under construction, remodeling the house was a family effort. Pecks ceramic sculptures are influenced by these two huge aspects of her life.
Peck attended three colleges over four years, San Francisco Art Institute, California College of Arts and Crafts in Oakland and The Evergreen State College in Washington. Unable to make a decision to focus on one subject, she studied photography, ceramics, printmaking, film history, folk history, welding, television production and finally, Russian history and literature. After graduation, she enrolled in a two month program at Southern California Institute of Architecture.
All her time as a child was spent with miniatures and Lego. Constructing towns on her bedroom floor that grew for days, she dreamed of being an architect. As an adult, Morgan Peck prefer the small scale and dream of playing with Lego. Clay slabs are used like sheets of plywood, 2x4’s or posts, and are built and re-built, assembled into something new each time, all on her bedroom floor.
Peck’s architectural and lego-like sculptures will be available at Third Drawer Down exclusively for the entire month of May, with an artist exhibition opening on Saturday the 11th of May
KENNY PITTOCK:
Hi, my name’s Kenny Pittock, I’m a 24 year old Melbourne artist. If people ask me what kind of art I make I usually just say “The best kind”. I guess though if that answer isn’t good enough, which it probably isn’t, I’d say that my work mostly plays with linguistics, humour, sentimentality and Australian iconography. If that answer isn’t good enough either, then I don’t know, really I just make paintings and sculptures.
BRODIE WOOD:
Melbourne based artist and designer, Brodie Vera Wood, graduated from the Victorian College of the Arts with a BFA (Drawing) in 2012. Her predominantly sculpture based practice is an ongoing exploration of two contradictory ideas: functionality and functionlessness. Alongside her fine art practice Brodie also designs and constructs furniture inside and out of the gallery arena. Her most recent work aims to bridge the gap between these two worlds within her creative sphere. There is great emphasis on craftsmanship and self-sufficiency in Brodie’s practice, combining both crafts typically perceived as ‘feminine’ with those more often seen as ‘masculine’ trades such as woodworking and welding.
TESSA CARAPIC:
My name is Tessa Carapic i am a Serbian artist living and working in Melbourne. My strength is playing with colours. My weakness is spelling. And my heart will always belong to Poppy Crompton.
Congratulations to our Electric Love instagram contest winner #danielrobertpike. The instagrammer of this little number now has 250.00$ worth of Third Drawer Down dollars to spend. We’ll be in touch via Instagram with your winnings. Thanks for everyone’s contributions, it was a hard choice!
ELECTRIC LOVE INSTAGRAM CONTEST
Win a $250 gift voucher by simply taking a photo of what you consider electric love.
To join the electric love competition, follow @thirddrawerdown on instagram, upload a photo of what you think electric love means, and use the tags @thirddrawerdown and #thirddrawerdown to enter your photo. Our favourites will be featured online and on our next newsletter, and we’ll contact our winning image taker on the 24th of April.
Best of Luck!!
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